A critical challenge facing developing country producers is to meet international labour standards
and codes of conduct in order to engage in global production networks. Evidence of gains for
workers from compliance with such standards and codes remains limited and patchy. This paper
focuses on the global football industry, a sector dominated by leading global brands who manage
dispersed global production networks. It assesses the work conditions for football stitchers engaged
in different forms of work organisation, factories, stitching centres, and home-based settings, in
Pakistan, India, and China. It draws on detailed qualitative primary field research with football
stitching workers and producers in these three countries. The paper explains how, and why, work
conditions of football stitchers differ across these locations through an analytical framework that
interweaves both global and local production contexts that influence work condition. In doing so, it
argues that current debates on the role of labour in global production networks have to go beyond a
narrow focus on labour standards and CSR compliance and engage with economic, technological
and social upgrading as factors that could generate sustained improvements in real wages and
workers conditions.